THE NEW YORKER NICE GIRL N o one saw Agnes come down the stairs. She had a way of going about unnoticed. It made her father and her brother Harry furious. Her father mentioned it sometimes but Harry didn't, which might have been because Agnes knew too much about him Sometimes Harry just stood and looked at her. "0 h, Lord, help us," he said. Occasionally, when she came into a room where the others were, her father looked up from his hook or his paper. "Well," he said in amazement, "how'd you get in here?" " Wh I . 0 " A . d y, Just came In, gnes sa! . She didn't like such remarks. "Just because I don't go around making a racket," she thought. She came down the stairs from her own room and heard voices in her mother's room. So there was something in the wind. Her father was scolding. (Agnes was a slender one. She walked softly.) There was a telephone stand in the big hall near the door to her moth- er's room. The door was closed at the moment. It was called the "big hall" not because it was particularly mag- nificent but to differentiate it from the upstairs hall. That one was called the "up hall." "I left my glasses on the window ledge in the up hall." It was convenient. Most of the rooms in the house were named, often rather fan- o 11 " h 0 " " h O d tastIca y: t e paInt room, t e CI er room," "Papa's coat room." The last was from Agnes' grandfather, on her mother's side. Agnes had heard an ex- planation. "Oh, he always came in and threw his overcoat on the hed in there." Agnes stopped by the telephone stand, near the door to her mother's room, and picked up the telephone book. If either her father or her'mother came suddenly out there, she would be in a quite innocent-seeming position, not ea vesdropping on her father and mother, just looking for a numher in the book. She stood, her eyes shining. "So, that's it." Her sister I\IIiriam's husband, Tom Haller, wanted to get a divorce. Agnes was thrilled, even joyous. Of course, not because Miriam was in trouble. "So, she didn't tell me that that) s why she came home from Chi- cago," she thought. "Tom's chucking her, eh?" and then right away her thoughts went back to Miriam. "The sly little cat-not saying a word to me." They were always thinking in the family that Miriam was open and ahoveboard. "They aCcuse me of being sly. 'Vhat about her?" And now both her father and her mother knew ahout l om and Miriam. If it turned out that Harry also knew and that Agnes her- self was the only one left out, she would be good and sore. If she had any sym- pathy for Miriam, it would go fast enough if she found that out. Her father was furious and was tramping up and down in her mother's room. "If he comes here, I'll show him!" he shouted. Tom Haller wanted a divorce and he didn't want to pay .."v1iriam alimony. "By God, 1'11 make him pay to the last cent. I'll take his skin off inch hy inch." It would he funny to see her father trying to take Tom Haller'" skin off. Alfred Wilson, the father, was a rather small man and Tom was big. As for Harry, he was a physical weakling. Harry was older than either Miriam or Agnes, and had been in the World War. He had been gassed, and there was something wrong with his lungs and he got drunk. He got drunk oftener than anyone, except Agnes, in the fam- ily knew. She knew where he kept his bottle of whiskey hidden in the house. Harry knew that she was on to a lot no one else knew. It made him a little afraid of her. Her father kept tramping up and down in her mother's room. All the others in the house thought that Agnes was away for the afternoon. She had told them all she was going driving with Mary Culbertson and had left the house just after lunch. Then she had changed her mind and had come back. She had phoned Mary from the drug- store and had come silently into the house and had gone up to her own room. Had "he been playing a hunch? She hadn't known why she suddenly decided not to go with Mary. Her father's shoes made a que er creaking noise on the floor of her mother's room. "Alfred, where did you get those shoes?" her mother said, and "Oh, damn shoes! " her father shouted. There was talk about her father's speak- ing too loud. "Kate wi!] hear you, Alfred," her mother said. Kate was the new maid, a tall red-haired coun- 15 try woman. She had been working in the Wilson family only two weeks. It wouldn't do to let Kate find out too much about the family too rapidly. It was no good letting a maid become too familiar, almost impertinent, the way the last one waS allowed to do. Agnes stood now by the door of her mother's room listening, the telephone book in her hand, and then her father came to the door. She saw the knob turn, but he didn't come out at once. He just stood by the door talking big. So Agnes put down the telephone book and went, softly as usual, out to the front porch. She sat there a moment and then went to the side porch. She decided she would wait there. Pres- ently her father would go off down- town to his law office and she would go to her mother's room. She would find out if her mother wanted to go on keeping everything a secret. I\IIiriam had left the house just. before Agnes came downstairs, and Agnes knew that Miriam would go downtown and find Harry. The two would go somewhere in Harrv's car. "I bet they drink to- gether," Agnes thought. She thought that it didn't look just right, a brother and sister being so thick. Before Miri- am had married Tom Haller, she and Harry were always together during the years Miriam was going away to school and coming home for summer vaca- tions. Agnes knew at that time that Miriam used to put up with, and even encourage, Harry's drinking. Before repeal, Harry had got his liquor from a man at the filling station out on the Mud Creek Highway. Agnes had known about it. She even knew that Miriam sometimes drove out there with Harry and wait- ed in the car while he went in. Agnes had got the filling-station man arrested and sent to jail. No one knew about it. She had writ- ten a letter to the sheriff and signed a made-up name, and it worked. The sheriff raided the place and sure enough found a lot of whiskey, and the man was tried and sent to jail, but of course Harry just began getting w his- key somewhere else. - '- -- -- ' \ -1'" - -- -- - =-- \ ..' ,..;;::--'.' - ,- /;1 ' ' , .:." - " I \' i ,'- ' \' ,').i; r :-'--'1 1 " / . J r, ... .. . ' I'}' .' \ ' " \ .\. ... \ ' - " , " 1 _ .-e..-. I '... "< " .' \' · f I "..WJ/_o" - - \.., I. f\ { ...__ _f __---- . I - , \\..t tu. ...::....' " . ' , --- -' . '.1 " , :i / , il .. '""' , .L '< ,"- './ W HAT had most aroused Agnes the day she heard her father '-'and mother discussing Miriam's divorce was